CESAPI - deadly sanctions on Iraq

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The UN Sanctions

The UN Security Council imposed the sanctions on Iraq after Iraq had invaded Kuwait in 1990 and these sanctions are to continue until the UN Special Committee has verified that Iraq has no more weapons of mass destruction. Since then the sanctions have been renewed through several UN Security Council Resolutions.

Effects of the Sanctions

According to the UN , over 1.2 million Iraqis had died as a result of the sanctions as of June 1997, this is a tragic statistic. However the effects of sanctions permeate the whole of the Iraqi society. The following quotes from UNICEF's “The Situation of Children in Iraq 2002” illustrate this:

• "many Iraqis live on as little as $3 to $6 a month" pg.1

• "A study carried out in May 2000 showed that close to half of children under five suffered from diarrhea within two weeks of that month; over a third of the children suffered from acute respitory infections; and nearly half suffered from fever." pg. 21

• "[S]afe drinking water is now a nation-wide problem." pg 23

• "The state of many of the schools in Iraq is not just a disincentive to education but also a public health hazard for children." pg. 25

• "...more than half of pregnant mothers are anemic, due to inadequate food intake in terms of both quality and quantity." pg. 27

• "As there has been no major change in government in Iraq since 1978, one can only conclude that if the Government had had the resources, it would have invested in social services, as in the past. This erosion of human development ... therefore appears attributable to the lasting effects of the crises of 1990/91 including the resulting sanctions regime..."

A victim of the UN sanctions - 2 year old Nenya after she died from meningitis. According to one doctor "A 50 cent tube could have saved the child's life, but the hospital has none." According to another doctor the tube is "impossible to obtain under the sanctions.". Dan DeLong Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Open sewage is a common sight in Iraq now. Parts to repair and maintain the sewage lines and water treatment plants have been denied by the UN sanctions committee and the medicine which would cure the water-borne diseases is largely unobtainable. This is one of the reasons why there is such a high child mortality rate, 200 daily according to UNICEF.

Children playing open sewage drain. photo by I MacInness Baghdad 1999